Exploring Faith with Curiosity

What are your first memories of church? I remember hearing a Bible story at school that puzzled me. Our hero bravely enters the enemy’s cave at night, and instead of killing them, cuts off a piece of his robe. I didn’t understand the significance of the piece of fabric, and so my dad tried to explain: imagine if he climbed into John Major’s bedroom (then Prime Minister) and cut off a piece of his pyjamas, people would understand he had the opportunity to kill him but had instead let him live. The story of David and Saul is about rightful kingship, and the insistence on living honourably. I didn’t understand this at the time, though, and still have the image of my father surprising John Major in his sleep. Children tend to patch together their own theology of personal symbols and experience, a latticework of gospel and memory.

These connections are important. I remember in one of the first sermons I heard at St James’s, Lucy talked about the etymological links between ‘religion’ and ‘ligament’, stressing the importance of religion as opposed to looser ‘spiritualities’. This is not about orthodoxy, but rather the serious things that connect us. It is about the important lines that guide what we do and do not do, the way faith makes a life meaningful.

What connections are we making, then, for children at St James’s? Children are welcome to play during the main service, however small, restless or noisy. It is part of a hope, perhaps, that faith itself is restless, exploratory and noisy. In our Godly Play sessions, children are invited to explore stories from the Bible and give their own responses. I was struck by the openness and curiosity of these sessions, the way children are encouraged to follow their own interest in a particular person or part of the story. It reminded me of something the psychoanalytic psychotherapist Adam Phillips said more broadly about living a meaningful life, that people should do things that they find interesting and nourishing. I like the idea of faith being guided by interest in the way that Phillips describes, allowing an ‘unofficial education’ guided by ‘affinities rather than … duties.’

It made me think about the people in those early Bible stories I found compelling; exhausted Peter, whose courage failed him at the crucial moment, heartsore David, burdened by the weight of his desires. I remember auditioning for Herod in my year six nativity play – partly because he had more lines than Mary (who had none), and partly because I was curious about what it would feel like to inhabit such baroque wickedness. The Bible is instructive in its examples of radiant goodness and bravery, but it is replete, too, with fabulous villains and flawed heroes, and they should also be explored. There is a disconnect, sometimes, between the formalities of celebrating first communion or confirmation, and true, living, breathing life in the church for children. How do we create space for them to be their full rich selves? I hope we can make an enduring faith practice for children at St James’s, something interesting and nourishing that encompasses high days, holy days, and daily bread.